Geoffrey West

Scale curves show how quantities scale with change is size. How things change with size. How system affected by change in size. Metabolic rate plot against body rate. Heart beats per life with mass (1.5 billion). Assets of companies with # of employees.

Data is straight line. Number of heart beats if any mammal roughly the same.

Suggests common conceptual framework underlying growth and org of animals, cities, companies have similar laws. Might lead to predictive science for cities, aging, companies, tumors, bodies. Organization, Structure and dynamics Evolving over networked structure over many spacing and temporal scales.

Scaling laws result from optimization network systems resulting continuous feedback system of natural selection.

Cities open ended growth unusual. Animals and companies stop growing. Yet cities rarely die. Many keep growing.

Metabolism how we grow and stay alive. Rate is quantitative measure. Need only light bulb in food. 11,000 watts for social life in US.

Engery underlies all process. Everything requires transformation of energy therefore produces some waste. All energy use has consequences. (2nd law) always produces non useful energy. Entropy always increases. Heat from friction – disorder.

Sublinear. Bigger the more efficient (less)
120 lbs person. 1300 cal
60 lbs dog only 850 cal
Supra linear bigger numbers increase.

Product of nonlinear multiple feedback mechanism interaction of infrastructure inhabitants and environment. Whole different from individual building blocks produce emergent behavior (no central control). Self organization

Adapting to changing conditions. Darwin.

3/4 power scaling law. Larger animals more efficient. Elephants 10,000x size, weight and cell count as rats, yet metabolic rate only 1,000x greater. (10to4th/10to3rd). Cells operate at rate 1/10 of rates. They live longer, breakers down slower. 25% saving with doubling of size.(1/4) This true for almost all animals. Cells, plants, all physiological events growth rate, heart rate, grey matter in Brian, lifespan, height of trees. Number of leaves.

General physical laws under any specific outcome. Nature constrained by these scaling laws. Math of scaling systems. Complex org need efficient delivery systems. Blood system. Fractal systems evolved according or determined these scaling laws

Cities scale in resources, conserve resources. .85. Output patents 1.15

Open ended growth reach finite time singularity. Growth can’t be sustained. Out of resurface or reset clock with innovation.
Accelerating pace means time between innovation must shorten.

Double volume doubles weight. Relative strength weakens with size. Swedish ship Vassar. 30% longer. With heavier cannons. Scale up sci not known. Too top heavy and too narrow.

Naive-Stokes planes, cars, blood, weather, climate change. Fluid dynamics. Feedback system if water interacting with itself. Turbulence.

William Frood invented modeling a system to understand larger. Scaling theory. Non linear. Frood #. Square of velocity divided by length

Books
On Growth and Form. Thompson
Death and Life of American cities Jane Jacobs

Radia 3/8 length 2/8

3 rules
Invariance of terminal units
Space filling
Optimiszed

Magic 4
Fractal look same at many scales. Measure coast line. Longer than we thought. Measurement needs resolution to have know how accurate it is.

Biology
Sublineral scaling in optimized system leads to bounded growth.

6 years longer if heart disease
3 years is cancer cured, life extended b7
All causes of death eliminated , we gone by 125.

Math and physics of Underlying networks that transfer energy and resources.

Why good people can do bad things. milgrim and zabado. Peer pressure, fear of rejection, desire to be part of group where power and control is conferred on individuals by authorities. Built into psyche not tied to culture. Should admit this.

Dunbar. 150 people we can track. Smaller circles. Group size of a species scales with volume of neocortex of the brain.
Socail Brian hypothesis

Ziff laws inversely proportional to its position in frequency table. Times a word is used. Most frequent word 2x more than next frequent, 3x more the next, etc

Marcitti rule. We work 30 from home. Distance determined by mode of transport. Less furnace is walk to work. More if drive. By always 30 min. Law works for patterns of visiting to cities. 500 from 5 miles visit once a month. (1/2 square) inverse sq law

Job created for each 22 people in town
8 people for company regardless of city size. Jobs scale 1:1 with city size.

of types of businesses in cities. Diversity increases with city size but slowly

Double city size, double jobs but only 5% increase in diversity of companies

4000 public companies. Bulk of Econ activity.

No model of economy complex, multitudinous complexity of companies. Local temporal policy.

We talk of transaction cost, org structure, competition. Minimize cost max profit, structure network to grow. Competition pressure in ecology of markets place.

Yet companies are complex adaptive system to function and survive. What laws underlay these systems. For instance, size distribution follows ziff law.

Econ relies on Econ in stable state. The Black Swan hard in Econ. Risk and outlining events.

Agent based model 1:1 model. Each entity unique. Not systemic behavior. Need both. Laws and individual specifics.

Emergent law of companies –
Companies approx scaled versions of each other. Profit, assets and sales. Plotted by # of employees. Self similar and scale to ziffa law.

Cities sub-linear scale like biology. Bounded growth.
Sales and cost difference scales linearly. 1:1

Time. We live according to socio-economic clock. Measures daily rotation of earth, regular. Our time is emergent phenomena determine by collective forces of social interactions. Speeding up in relation to rotational time. Leading to essential singularity.